Galerie de photos de Titan, satellite de la planète Saturne

<h1>PIA01532: Titan's Cloud Systems</h1><div class="PIA01532" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;">This Voyager 2 photograph of Titan, taken Aug. 23 from a range of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles), shows some detail in the cloud systems on this Saturnian moon. The southern hemisphere appears lighter in contrast, a well-defined band is seen near the equator, and a dark collar is evident at the north pole. All these bands are associated with cloud circulation in Titan's atmosphere. The extended haze, composed of submicron-size particles, is seen clearly around the satellite's limb. This image was composed from blue, green and violet frames.<p>JPL manages the Voyager project for NASA's Office of Space Science.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01532" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA01532: Titan's Cloud Systems sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA01532: Titan's Cloud Systems sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA01532: Titan's Cloud Systems
Saturne_Titan_4.jpg
Saturne_Titan_4.jpg
<h1>PIA06233: Angular Bright Spot</h1><div class="PIA06233" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>A new image of Titan taken by Cassini provides a closer, clearer view of an interesting bright feature surrounded by darker material.</p><p>During the two most recent flybys of Titan, on March 31 and April 16, 2005, Cassini captured a number of images of the hemisphere of Titan that faces Saturn. The image at the left is taken from a mosaic of images obtained in March 2005 (see <a href="/catalog/PIA06222">PIA06222</a>) and shows the location of the new image at the right. The image at the right shows an intriguing bright spot as well as the southern boundary of the dark terrain that dominates the equatorial region of this hemisphere of Titan.</p><p>The 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) bright spot seen in the upper right portion of the image at the left was first seen in images taken during a distant encounter with Titan shortly after Cassini's Saturn orbit insertion burn in July 2004. In images taken in March, this spot was shown to be roughly circular but new, higher-resolution images like the one at the right reveal surprisingly angular edges. The angular margins suggest that they have been influenced by tectonic processes (for example, faulting). The sharp western margins and more diffuse bright material off the eastern margin are consistent with bright features seen within dark terrain in the region of Titan observed during previous flybys late last year and in February (see <a href="/catalog/PIA06541">PIA06541</a>). The west-east nature of these features is consistent with "wakes" being formed through wind-driven activity. It is also worth noting that this bright spot appears to be partly surrounded by thin, curving tendrils of bright material.</p><p>The view at the left consists of five images that have been added together and enhanced to bring out surface detail and to reduce noise, although some camera artifacts remain. </p><p>These images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers -- considered to be the imaging science subsystem's best spectral filter for observing the surface of Titan. This view was acquired from a distance of approximately 43,000 kilometers (26,700 miles). The pixel scale of this image is 510 meters (0.3 miles) per pixel, although the actual resolution is likely to be several times larger.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06233" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06233: Angular Bright Spot sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06233: Angular Bright Spot sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06233: Angular Bright Spot
<h1>PIA06111: Closing in on Titan</h1><div class="PIA06111" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Titan's veil begins to lift as Cassini's cameras peer through the hazy moon.</p><p>This image acquired at a range of 344,000 kilometers (213,700 miles) shows details at Titan's surface never seen before. The image shows only surface brightness no topographic shading. The finest features are less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) across. In other areas the surface boundaries are less distinct perhaps due to different geologic process or atmospheric effects. There are some linear features that could be impact craters but the fact that many features are linear suggests that other geologic processes are shaping the surface.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06111" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06111: Closing in on Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06111: Closing in on Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06111: Closing in on Titan
<h1>PIA07751: Cassini's Oct. 28, 2005, Titan Flyby</h1><div class="PIA07751" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This map of Titan's surface illustrates the regions that will be viewed by Cassini's imaging cameras during the spacecraft's close flyby of Titan on Oct. 28, 2005. At closest approach, the spacecraft is expected to pass approximately 1,400 kilometers (800 miles) above the moon's surface.</p><p>The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing resolutions.</p><p>The highest resolution imaging coverage during the flyby will be of the eastern portion of the dark region called Shangri-la and the boundary between Shangri-la and bright Xanadu. Several of the major "islands" in eastern Shangri-la will be featured, including faculae (or bright spots) which have the provisional names Kerguelen, Vis, Crete and Tortola. These bright features on Titan are named for island features from Earth.</p><p>The map shows only brightness variations on Titan's surface (the illumination is such that there are no shadows and no shading due to topographic variations). Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale labeled on the map.</p><p>The images for this global map were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers - a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye) at which light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to reach the surface and return through the atmosphere to be detected by the camera. The images have been processed to enhance surface details.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07751" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07751: Cassini's Oct. 28, 2005, Titan Flyby sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07751: Cassini's Oct. 28, 2005, Titan Flyby sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07751: Cassini's Oct. 28, 2005, Titan Flyby
titan_panorama.jpg
titan_panorama.jpg
<h1>PIA07519: Titan Beyond the Rings</h1><div class="PIA07519" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Saturn's hazy moon Titan appears to drift above Saturn's ringplane in this view taken only a tenth of a degree above the rings. Titan's small orbital inclination is enough to make it appear above the ringplane from this viewing angle. Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.</p><p>The Sun is below the rings in this image, so light that makes it to Cassini is that which has been diffusely transmitted through the rings. Thus, the densest parts of the rings appear dark in this image, and the dusty gaps in the rings, such as the Cassini Division, appear bright. </p><p>The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 25, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.2 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 50 degrees. The image scale is 19 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07519" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07519: Titan Beyond the Rings sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07519: Titan Beyond the Rings sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07519: Titan Beyond the Rings
<h1>PIA07787: A Tale of Two Moons</h1><div class="PIA07787" lang="en" style="width:552px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Many denizens of the Saturn system wear a uniformly gray mantle of darkened ice, but not these two moons. The brightest body in the solar system, Enceladus, is contrasted here against Titan's smoggy, golden murk.</p><p>Ironically, what these two moons hold in common gives rise to their stark contrasting colors. Both bodies are, to varying degrees, geologically active. For Enceladus, its southern polar vents emit a spray of icy particles that coats the small moon, giving it a clean, white veneer. On Titan, yet undefined processes are supplying the atmosphere with methane and other chemicals that are broken down by sunlight. These chemicals are creating the thick yellow-orange haze that is spread through the atmosphere and, over geologic time, falls and coats the surface. </p><p>The thin, bluish haze along Titan's limb is caused when sunlight is scattered by haze particles roughly the same size as the wavelength of blue light, or around 400 nanometers.</p><p>Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained on Feb. 5, 2006, using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of 4.1 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from Enceladus and 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the original images was 25 kilometers (16 miles) per pixel on Enceladus and 32 kilometers (20 miles) per pixel on Titan. The view has been magnified by a factor of two.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07787" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07787: A Tale of Two Moons sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07787: A Tale of Two Moons sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07787: A Tale of Two Moons
<h1>PIA06201: Titan's Variety</h1><div class="PIA06201" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA06201_fig1.jpg"></a><br>Figure 1</p><p>This map of Titan's surface brightness was assembled from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft over the past year, both as it approached the Saturn system and during three closer flybys in July, October and December 2004.</p><p>Due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the size of surface features that can be resolved is a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale. The pixel scales of the individual images in the map range from 88 to 2 kilometers (55 miles to 1 mile), so the scales of the surface features that can be resolved range from 180 to 10 kilometers (112 to 6 miles).</p><p>The images were acquired using a near-infrared filter (centered at 938 nanometers) that has been proven effective at peering through Titan's haze to its troposphere and surface. Similar to a cloudy day on Earth, these images indicate only brightness variations; there are no shadows or topographic shading effects.</p><p>The map reveals complex patterns of bright and dark material on Titan's surface. The large scale features, including Xanadu Regio--the large, bright feature that extends from approximately 80 degrees to 130 degrees west near the equator--have been observed from Earth over the past several years.</p><p>The patterns seem to vary with latitude. Close to the equator there is more contrast in the large-scale bright and dark features, with some strikingly linear boundaries that are suggestive of geologic processes at work within Titan's crust. The southern-middle latitudes are more uniformly bright, whereas there is more dark material near the south pole. The very bright features near the south pole are clouds. High northern latitudes are not illuminated during the current season on Titan, which is southern summer.</p><p>Cassini-Huygens scientists are investigating what causes the latitudinal variation in brightness. One possibility is that, similar to Earth, some parts of the surface receive higher amounts of precipitation than others over Titan's long year (29.5 Earth years), resulting in different amounts of erosion across the surface.</p><p>The Huygens probe landed at approximately 10 degrees south, 190 degrees west, near a boundary between dark and bright material. By combining Huygens' very high-resolution observations (see <a href="/catalog/PIA07235">PIA07235</a>) with Cassini's regional and global-scale, lower-resolution images of Titan, as well as Cassini radar and the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer observations (see <a href="/catalog/PIA07009">PIA07009</a> and <a href="/catalog/PIA06983">PIA06983</a>, respectively), Cassini-Huygens scientists are working to unravel the complex history of Titan's surface.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06201" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06201: Titan's Variety sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06201: Titan's Variety sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06201: Titan's Variety
<h1>PIA06116: Zooming In On Titan</h1><div class="PIA06116" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA06116_fig1.jpg"></a><br>Figure 1</p><p>This map of Titan's surface, generated from images taken during Cassini's approach to Saturn, illustrates the imaging coverage planned during Cassini's first very close Titan flyby on Oct. 26, 2004.</p><p>Colored lines enclose regions that will be covered at different imaging scales as Cassini approaches Titan. Based on previous observations, it is anticipated that the size of the smallest visible surface features will be approximately five times larger than the image scale. Thus, the smallest visible features within the region bounded by the red curve should be about 1 to 1.2 kilometers (0.6 to 0.9 mile) across. The yellow X marks the predicted landing site for the Huygens probe, the target of the camera's highest-resolution mosaic. Images of this site taken near closest approach may have higher resolution than indicated here. Features a few hundred meters or yards across may be discernible, depending on the effect that relative motion between the spacecraft and Titan has on the quality of the images.</p><p>The images used to create the map were acquired between April and June 2004 using a narrow, 938-nanometer filter that sees through Titan's atmospheric haze to the surface. These images have been processed to enhance surface details. Scales range from 88 to 35 kilometers (55 to 22 miles) per pixel. It's currently winter in Titan's northern hemisphere, so high northern latitudes are not illuminated, resulting in the map's upper limit at roughly 45 degrees north latitude.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06116" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06116: Zooming In On Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06116: Zooming In On Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06116: Zooming In On Titan
<h1>PIA07565: Dawn at the Huygens Site</h1><div class="PIA07565" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Titan's equatorial latitudes are distinctly different in character from its south polar region, as this image shows.</p><p>The dark terrain, presumably lowland, seen here does not extend much farther south than about 30 degrees South. The successful Huygens probe landed in such a region. The Huygens probe is rotating into the light here, seeing the dawn of a new day.</p><p>The bright region toward the right side of Titan's disk is Xanadu. This area is thought to consist of upland terrain that is relatively uncontaminated by the dark material that fills the lowland regions.</p><p>Near the moon's south pole, and just eastward of the terminator, is the dark feature identified by imaging scientists as the best candidate (so far) for a past or present hydrocarbon lake on Titan (see <a href="/catalog/PIA06241">PIA06241</a>). Farther east of the lake-like feature, bright clouds arc around the pole. These clouds occupy a latitude range that is consistent with previously-seen convective cloud activity on Titan.</p><p>Titan is Saturn's largest moon, at 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.</p><p>The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on July 7, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 60 degrees. The image was obtained using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The image scale is 7 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07565" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07565: Dawn at the Huygens Site sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07565: Dawn at the Huygens Site sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07565: Dawn at the Huygens Site
<h1>PIA07965: Titan Volcano</h1><div class="PIA07965" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This false-color mosaic of Saturn's largest moon Titan, obtained by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, shows what scientists interpret as an icy volcano (see inset). The mosaic was constructed using six medium-resolution infrared images, obtained during Cassini's flyby of the hazy moon on Oct. 26, 2004. </p><p>The colors correspond to atmospheric (red) and surface (green and blue) features that are not visible to the human eye. The inset shows a high-resolution image taken using a 2.3 micron filter near the point of Cassini's closest approach to Titan at 1,200 kilometers (746 miles). The resolution in this inset image is 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per pixel. The image scale of the large image is 25 kilometers (16 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at <a href="http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu">http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07965" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07965: Titan Volcano sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07965: Titan Volcano sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07965: Titan Volcano
 
<h1>PIA08127: The Air Up There</h1><div class="PIA08127" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This specially processed composite view reveals a tremendous amount of structure in the northern polar atmosphere of Titan. The hazes in Titan's atmosphere are known to extend hundreds of kilometers above the surface.</p><p>Structure visible here could be due to multiple detached hazes, or waves in the atmosphere that propagate through stably stratified layers.</p><p>Ten images taken during a brief period were processed to enhance fine detail and then were combined to create this view.</p><p>North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up.</p><p>The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 155 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08127" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08127: The Air Up There sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08127: The Air Up There sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08127: The Air Up There
<h1>PIA03567: Dunes Galore</h1><div class="PIA03567" lang="en" style="width:510px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Large areas of this Cassini synthetic aperture radar image of Titan are covered by long, dark ridges. They resemble the "cat scratches" seen in other places on Titan, but here they are longer and straighter. Spaced about 1 to 2 kilometers (0.6 to 1 miles) apart, they curve slightly around teardrop-shaped bright terrain, giving the impression of a Japanese garden of sand raked around boulders. The bright material appears to be high-standing rough material that the ridges bend around. This suggests that the ridges are dunes that winds have blown across the surface of Titan from left to right (roughly west to east). </p><p>This image was taken during the ninth Titan flyby on Oct. 28, 2005, (the fourth flyby for Cassini's synthetic aperture radar), at a distance of about 1300 kilometers (800 miles). </p><p>The image covers an area roughly 140 kilometers by 200 kilometers (120 miles). It is located 13 degrees south latitude and 300 degrees west longitude.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03567" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA03567: Dunes Galore sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA03567: Dunes Galore sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA03567: Dunes Galore
<h1>PIA08738: Swimming in Dunes</h1><div class="PIA08738" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This image from Cassini's radar instrument was acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode during a Sept. 7, 2006, flyby of Titan. </p><p>The image shows long, dark ridges similar to those seen in previous flybys. These are interpreted to be longitudinal dunes. Dunes are mostly an equatorial phenomenon on Titan, and the material forming them may be solid organic particles or ice coated with organic material. Spaced up to 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) apart, these dunes curve around bright features that may be high-standing topographic obstacles, in conformity with the wind patterns. The interaction between the two types of features is complex and not well understood, but clearly the topography and the dunes have influenced each other in other ways as well. </p><p>This image is centered at 44 degrees west longitude, 8 degrees north latitude and covers approximately 160 by 325 kilometers (99 by 202 miles) on Titan's surface. The smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (about 550 yards) across.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08738" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08738: Swimming in Dunes sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08738: Swimming in Dunes sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08738: Swimming in Dunes
<h1>PIA09833: A World of Questions</h1><div class="PIA09833" lang="en" style="width:719px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Titan's hazy orange globe hangs before the Cassini spacecraft, partly illuminated -- a world with many mysteries yet to be uncovered.</p><p>North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 30 degrees to the right. The moon's north pole tilts slightly away from the spacecraft here.</p><p>Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 5, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 213,000 kilometers (133,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 128 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09833" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA09833: A World of Questions sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA09833: A World of Questions sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA09833: A World of Questions
<h1>PIA06152: Second Titan Targeted Flyby #2</h1><div class="PIA06152" lang="en" style="width:512px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This image was taken during Cassini's very close approach to Titan on Dec. 13, 2004.</p><p>The view shows pronounced banding in the Titan atmosphere. The image has been processed to enhance the banding, but a few artifacts of the imaging process, such as the small "doughnut" shape at right, remain.</p><p>The image was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera at a distance of approximately 124,800 kilometers (77,500 miles) from Titan, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 890 nanometers. The Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle is 15 degrees. The image scale is about 7.5 kilometers (4.6 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06152" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06152: Second Titan Targeted Flyby #2 sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06152: Second Titan Targeted Flyby #2 sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06152: Second Titan Targeted Flyby #2
<h1>PIA08116: Titan's Pebbles</h1><div class="PIA08116" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>When printed on letter sized paper this poster shows the size of the 'rocks' on Titan's surface in their true size. The left image was taken with the descent imager/spectral radiometer onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. The Huygens image was taken on Jan. 14, 2005.<p></p>The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. <p></p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a></p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08116" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08116: Titan's Pebbles sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08116: Titan's Pebbles sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08116: Titan's Pebbles
<h1>PIA06183: Hazy Days on Titan</h1><div class="PIA06183" lang="en" style="width:717px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Saturn's large, smog-enshrouded moon Titan greets Cassini in full color as the spacecraft makes its third close pass on Feb. 15, 2005.</p><p>This view has been rotated so that north on Titan is up. There is a slight difference in brightness from north to south, a seasonal effect that was noted in NASA's Voyager spacecraft images, and is clearly visible in some infrared images from Cassini (see <a href="/catalog/PIA06121">PIA06121</a>). The northern polar region is largely in darkness at this time.</p><p>This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera through using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 229,000 kilometers (142,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 20 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06183" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06183: Hazy Days on Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06183: Hazy Days on Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06183: Hazy Days on Titan
<h1>PIA07877: Red Spot on Titan</h1><div class="PIA07877" lang="en" style="width:600px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument onboard Cassini has found an unusual bright, red spot on Titan.</p><p>This dramatic color (but not true color) image was taken during the April 16, 2005, encounter with Titan. North is to the right. In the center it shows the dark lanes of the "H"-shaped feature (see <a href="/catalog/PIA06407">PIA06407</a>) discovered from Earth and first seen by Cassini last July shortly after it arrived in the Saturn system. At the southwestern edge of the "H" feature, near Titan's limb (edge), is an area roughly 500 kilometers (300 miles) across. That area is 50 percent brighter, when viewed using light with a wavelength of 5 microns, than the bright continent-sized area known as Xanadu (see <a href="/catalog/PIA06107">PIA06107</a>).</p><p>Xanadu extends to the northwest of the bright spot, beyond the limb (edge) of Titan in this image. Near the terminator (the line between day and night) at the bottom of this image is the 80 kilometer (50 mile) crater that has been previously seen by the Cassini radar, imaging cameras, and the visual and infrared spectrometer (see <a href="/catalog/PIA07868">PIA07868</a>).</p><p>At wavelengths shorter than 5 microns, the spot is not unusually bright. The strange spectral character of this enigmatic feature has left the team with four possibilities for its source: the spot could be a surface coloration, a mountain range, a cloud, or a hot spot. </p><p>The hot spot hypothesis will be tested during a Titan flyby on July 2, 2006, when the visual and infrared spectrometer will take nighttime images of this area. If it is hot, it will glow at night. </p><p>This color image was created from separate images in the 1.7 micron (blue), 2.0 micron (green), and 5.0 micron (red) spectral windows through which it is possible to see Titan's surface. The yellow that humans see has a wavelength of about 0.5 microns, so the colors shown are between 3 and 10 times more red than the human eye can detect.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For additional information on the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit <a href="http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu">http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07877" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07877: Red Spot on Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07877: Red Spot on Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07877: Red Spot on Titan
<h1>PIA06990: Titan Vs. Mars</h1><div class="PIA06990" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This image compares streaked terrain on Titan and Mars. At left is an image from Cassini of the region where the Huygens probe is expected to land. At right is a picture from NASA's Viking 1 orbiter, showing streaks on Mars caused by winds blowing from right to left. The streaks at the Huygens landing site were formed by some kind of fluid, possibly wind, moving from the upper left to lower right (west to east). </p><p>The Cassini image was taken on Oct. 26, 2004, by the spacecraft's imaging science subsystem using near-infrared filters. North is 45 degrees to the right of vertical. The scale of this image is 0.83 kilometers (.52 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For the latest news about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/cassini">http://www.nasa.gov/cassini</a>. For more information about the mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06990" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06990: Titan Vs. Mars sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06990: Titan Vs. Mars sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06990: Titan Vs. Mars
<h1>PIA08428: Xanadu: Rivers Flowed onto a Sunless Sea</h1><div class="PIA08428" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This image from the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on the Cassini spacecraft shows the radar-bright western margin of Xanadu, one of the most prominent features on Titan (see also <a href="/catalog/PIA08425">PIA08425</a>). In radar images, bright regions indicate a rough or scattering material, while a dark region might be smoother or more absorbing. The image was taken during a flyby of Titan on April 30, 2006.</p><p>Narrow, sinuous, radar-bright channels, meandering like a maze, are seen on the right-hand-side of the image. These may be river networks that might have flowed onto the dark areas on the left of the image. Vast, dark areas covered by dunes are seen on the equatorial regions of Titan (see <a href="/catalog/PIA03567">PIA03567</a>) and have been referred to as Titan's "sand seas." Near the middle of the image is a radar-bright area that has a boundary with the dark sand seas. Because the radar illumination is coming from the top, this indicates that the bright region, Xanadu, is topographically higher than the sand seas. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08428" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08428: Xanadu: Rivers Flowed onto a Sunless Sea sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08428: Xanadu: Rivers Flowed onto a Sunless Sea sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08428: Xanadu: Rivers Flowed onto a Sunless Sea
<h1>PIA06184: Titan's Night Side</h1><div class="PIA06184" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This image of Titan's night side was taken during Cassini's very close flyby of the smoggy moon on Feb. 15, 2005. </p><p>The image shows Titan's thick atmosphere illuminated from behind by sunlight. A detached haze layer is visible over the entire globe. The haze layer over the north polar region (at the top) has an unusual structure, a feature that imaging scientists have noticed in earlier flybys but do not yet fully understand.</p><p>The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of visible blue light centered at 460 nanometers. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 134,000 kilometers (83,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 158 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06184" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06184: Titan's Night Side sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06184: Titan's Night Side sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06184: Titan's Night Side
<h1>PIA06997: Haze Silhouettes Against Titan's Glow</h1><div class="PIA06997" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>A high-altitude haze layer residing some 400 kilometers (249 miles) above the surface of Titan is seen here traced along the limb of Titan as silhouetted against the glow of Titan's atmosphere produced by the fluorescence of methane gas. This detached haze layer can be seen as a dark lane imbedded within the gold-colored fluorescent layers of Titan. </p><p>This image of Titan's limb and surface was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft's visual infrared mapping spectrometer on Dec. 13, 2004 from a vantage point some 158,000 kilometers (98,177 miles) above the night side of Titan, at a phase angle of 161 degrees. Beneath the fluorescence, Titan's surface at the extreme limb can be seen in blue color, illuminated by 5-micron wavelength sunlight that penetrates the thick atmosphere and hazes to reflect off the limb of Titan. The darkness of the silhouetted haze layer comprised of relatively small particles (less than the 3 micron wavelength of light) suggests to scientists that the particles themselves absorb strongly at the fluorescent wavelength (3.3 microns), and thus are possibly comprised of relatively complex hydrocarbon aerosols generated by photochemical processes in Titan's upper atmosphere. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit <a href="http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/">http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/</a>. <p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06997" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06997: Haze Silhouettes Against Titan's Glow sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06997: Haze Silhouettes Against Titan's Glow sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06997: Haze Silhouettes Against Titan's Glow
<h1>PIA06242: Clouds in the Distance</h1><div class="PIA06242" lang="en" style="width:705px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Although it is far too cold for blossoming flowers, summer does bring storm clouds and presumably rain to Titan's south polar region. The observed persistence of convective storm activity in the region during the southern Titan summer has led scientists to speculate that the dark, footprint-shaped feature near upper left could be a past or present reservoir for Titan's methane rains.</p><p>This series of three Cassini narrow angle camera images, centered on the pole, shows the evolution of bright clouds in the region over the course of two hours during Cassini's distant June 6, 2005, flyby of the planet-sized moon.</p><p>The appearance of the feature seen here is unique among the dark terrains observed thus far on Titan. Other dark areas appear to have angular or diffuse boundaries, while this one possesses a smooth perimeter, suggestive of an eroded shoreline.</p><p>In addition to the notion that the dark feature is or was a lake filled with liquid hydrocarbons, scientists have speculated about other possibilities. For instance, it is plausible that the lake is simply a broad depression filled by dark, solid hydrocarbons falling from the atmosphere onto Titan's surface. In this case, the smoothed outline might be the result of a process unrelated to rainfall, such as a sinkhole or a volcanic caldera.</p><p>A still image of the south polar region from the same time period is also available (see <a href="/catalog/PIA06241">PIA06241</a>).</p><p>The images in this movie sequence were taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light, allowing Cassini to see through the obscuring smog of Titan's atmosphere and down to the surface. The images were acquired from an approximate distance of 450,000 kilometers (279,000 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the original images is approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel; the images were aligned and reprocessed at the same scale to create the movie. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06242" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06242: Clouds in the Distance sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06242: Clouds in the Distance sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06242: Clouds in the Distance
<h1>PIA08454: Dunes and more Dunes</h1><div class="PIA08454" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This image was taken with the Cassini Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on Oct. 28, 2005. </p><p>This was the fourth flyby of Titan during which radar images were obtained, and this pass considerably expanded the coverage of Titan's surface. </p><p>The swath is about 6,150 kilometers kilometers (3,821 miles) long, extending from 7 degrees north to 18 degrees south latitude and 179 west to 320 west longitude. </p><p>The spatial resolution of the radar images ranges from about 300 meters (984 feet) per pixel to about 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) per pixel. It covers the area where the Huygens probe landed (eastern end of the swath), giving geologic context for the landing site. </p><p>The most ubiquitous features in this swath are "cat scratches," which are interpreted as longitudinal dunes and were first seen in the February 2005 flyby, see <a href="/catalog/PIA03555">PIA03555</a>. </p><p>Also prominent are long, bright ridges, concentrated near the eastern end of the swath. These may be tectonic in origin, and are seen for the first time here. No impact craters are seen, indicating a young surface.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08454" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08454: Dunes and more Dunes sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08454: Dunes and more Dunes sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08454: Dunes and more Dunes
titanrain_garlick.jpg
titanrain_garlick.jpg
<h1>PIA06071: Through the Haze</h1><div class="PIA06071" lang="en" style="width:704px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The Cassini spacecraft has beamed back a new, more detailed image of smog-enshrouded Titan. This view represents an improvement in resolution of nearly three times over the previous Cassini image release of Titan <a href="/catalog/PIA05392">(see PIA05392)</a>.</p><p>The superimposed coordinate system grid in the accompanying image at right illustrates the geographical regions of the moon that are illuminated and visible, as well as the orientation of Titan. North is up and rotated 25 degrees to the left. The yellow curve marks the position of the boundary between day and night on Titan. This image shows about one quarter of Titan's surface, from 0 to 70 degrees West longitude, and just barely overlaps part of the surface shown in the previous Titan image release. Most of the visible surface in this image has not yet been shown in any Cassini image.</p><p>The image was obtained with the narrow angle camera on June 14, 2004, at a phase, or Sun-Titan-spacecraft, angle of 61 degrees and at a distance of 10.4 million kilometers (6.5 million miles) from Titan. The image scale is 62 kilometers (39 miles) per pixel. The image was magnified by a factor of two using a linear interpolation scheme. No further processing to remove the effects of the overlying atmosphere has been performed.</p><p>The observed brightness variations are real, on scales of one hundred kilometers or less. The image was obtained in the near-infrared (centered at 938 nanometers) through a polarizing filter. The combination was designed to reduce the obscuration by atmospheric haze. The haze is more transparent at 938 nanometers than at shorter wavelengths, and light of 938 nanometers wavelength is not absorbed by methane gas in Titan's atmosphere. Light at this wavelength consequently samples the surface, and the polarizer blocks out light scattered mainly by the haze. This is similar to the way a polarizer, put on the front of a lens of a hand-held camera, makes distant objects more clear on Earth.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06071" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06071: Through the Haze sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06071: Through the Haze sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06071: Through the Haze
<h1>PIA10546: Titan's North Polar Haze</h1><div class="PIA10546" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Titan's globally distributed detached haze layer and the moon's north polar hood, both notable details of its thick atmosphere, are clearly seen in this image from the Cassini spacecraft. </p><p>Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across, slightly larger than Mercury.</p><p>The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.742 million kilometers (1.083 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 50 degrees. Image scale is 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov" class="external free" target="wpext">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org" class="external free" target="wpext">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10546" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA10546: Titan's North Polar Haze sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA10546: Titan's North Polar Haze sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA10546: Titan's North Polar Haze